Nicholas Hutchinson wrote:As a general question, do the rules of tincture apply when building flags, pennions, standards??

We are talking about two different subjects, Heraldry and Vexillology. Heraldic rules need only apply to vexillology to the parts that are heraldic. That is to say that a shield displayed on a flag should be heraldicly correct. The field of the flag is down to the designer.

All the different types of heraldic flags on the other hand would fall under heraldry rather than vexillology and should be heraldicly correct.

Nicholas Hutchinson wrote:As a general question, do the rules of tincture apply when building flags, pennions, standards??

Apparently not so strictly. For a start the field was often of the livery colour(s), which might be anything, including stains. The badge colours might conceivably clash with the livery as might the crest - ideally not, but as they might have been designed at different times anything might happen. (I had difficulty over the green of the field of my banner and the green leaves of the badge. Apparently the heraldic painter will simply have chosen a different shade of green for the leaves. I wait with impatience to see how he/she finessed this.)

Look also at the standard in my original post. The "motto-bendlets" are white overlaying a white/red field. One might expect them to be, say, blue, but then the script of the motto would have to be white or gold. Also the torses are white/red on a red field. The standard maker would have to get around these colour issues by giving the borders edges of different colours (counterchanged?), or possibly by using different material. (Remember that standards were meant to be of cloth and flying in the breeze, not painted on paper or parchment.)

Of course the foregoing comments apply only to heraldic standards. Heraldic flags (banners) were the CoA depicted on cloth and thus followed the tincture conventions applying to CoAs.

Chris Green wrote:Apparently not so strictly. For a start the field was often of the livery colour(s), which might be anything, including stains. The badge colours might conceivably clash with the livery as might the crest - ideally not, but as they might have been designed at different times anything might happen.

To illustrate this: I designed these two standards for myself as kind of an exercise when we were discussing standards in the AHS forum. (The red saltire on white is for my home state of Alabama, not Ireland).

Strangely enough, everyone in the discussion preferred the green holly leaves on black over green on yellow.

Kathy McClurg wrote:Generally you'd have your motto somewhere on such a standard, like on the bends...

As I said in my original post:

(I have seen one standard where this element did not contain the motto (presumably the armiger did not have one) and an embroidered pattern was substituted.)

Perhaps Nicholas hasn't got a motto (yet).

As for your "stab" Nicholas: well done! You have captured the various elements well.

To be picky: you might dump the white fimbriation on the "motto-bendlets" which seems unnecessary and makes for a tincture clash white/white; and you could be criticised for the "split ends", but as a US citizen you are not bound to follow the English or Scottish conventions.